Panama coach Hernan Dario Gomez has heaped plaudits on Gareth Southgate’s England team and admitted that his nation could have lost by a bigger margin than 6-1 in their 2018 FIFA World Cup Group G clash on Sunday.

The tournament debutants were put to the sword by the Three Lions in Nizhny Novgorod as Harry Kane scored a hat-trick, John Stones bagged a brace and Jesse Lingard completed the scoring.

“We could have conceded more goals. We tried to play against England. We tried to avoid a bigger catastrophe and kept the ball in the second half.

“England are so practical. It’s a beautiful team… I spoke to a colleague at half time and said ‘I’m starting to feel scared’. We can’t think about equalizing, we have to think about stopping England scoring more goals.

“We wanted 0-0 in the first half but we were feeling rather frightened. Given that Panama is like a small young child in football, other teams don’t really decipher our style of play – there were three or four opportunities we didn’t take properly.”

The defeat means that Panama will be going home after their final Group G game against Tunisia on Thursday.